#if it were up to me since jey is pretty over i think i’d make it jey vs tama with jey winning

[takethistoyourstardust]

i’m not watching king and queen of the ring but i think tama tonga is gonna be the king and i HOPE it’s jey uso who becomes king of the ring.

[thesunnyshow]

Name: Kim Age: 26 (27 in September) Writing Blog URL(s): @jinterlude​   

Nationality: Filipino-American Languages: English  Star Sign: Virgo MBTI: ISFJ-T Favorite color: Any shade of blue  Favorite food: Ah, I have so many, but I really do love ramen & this Filipino noodle dish my grandma makes. Favorite movie: West Side Story. A close second is Pride & Prejudice (2005) Favorite ice cream flavor: Rocky Road  Favorite animal: Pandas Go-to karaoke song: Upside Down by A*Teens (I think I just dated myself) 

What fandom(s) do you write for? Mainly BTS, but I have written for SVT, EXO, GOT7, Monsta X, B.A.P, & NCT

When did you post your first piece? Oh dang, when? Hmm… I want to say Oct. 2016 (?) on my first blog (I had deleted and came back to Tumblr).

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I mostly write a combo because it just happens that way! My main genres are: fluff, romance, & humor/crack. 

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? I mainly write OCs stories because that’s what makes me the happiest when it comes to writing, but I still write x reader fics for drabbles and oneshots. 

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? Funny story. The reason why I started writing for Tumblr is because an old group of friends said that I should write a funny story based on a college class of mine, so I did and here we are. 

What inspires you to write? Usually, it’s my imagination, but other times it’s either the song I’m listening to or even the show I’m currently watching. Right now, my inspiration draws from anime. 

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? Genre wise, I love writing fluff & romance. AUs wise, I’m a sucker for Royal/Royalty. Mafia/Gang & Soulmate AUs would be a close second. 

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? Oh, wow. I honestly never thought about that before. I think for me, the one thing I hope my readers get from my stories is at the end of the day, please do something that will make you happy. Your own happiness should always be a top priority for you. 

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? I take a break! Instead of forcing myself out of the creativity slump, I just take a break and let my mind recharge. Then, I go back to my outline and look over while listening to music that I know will spark some creativity juices. 

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? My favorite works (yes, I couldn’t pick just one) are my Royal!AU Seokjin series (Fight for Me & Our Second Chance). I love the amount of time and effort I put into those two stories, and I’m simply in awe at the world and characters I created. My second favorite is my latest Seokjin oneshot, Protecting Each Other. It’s my first story that exceeded 10,000 words, and I’m just proud of how that turned out. Successful wise, I would say it’s, This Little String. It’s a Soulmate!Taehyung oneshot based around the red-string of fate, and every other month, I see someone like and/or reblog it, so I say that’s pretty successful!

Who is your favorite person to write about? Seokjin hands down. I mean, not only is he one of my ultimate biases, but for some reason my creative banks dishes out ideas and inspiration for him like it’s nothing. 

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? I personally don’t think so. You are still writing original content that derails from the source material (or adds to it), all you have to do is just replace your idols’ name with an original character name, and there you go. What do you think makes a good story? For me, I’d say that if you’re honestly proud of the end product, then that story is good, and your readers will see that. What is your writing process like? First I get an idea, or I like to call it, “it appeared to me in a vision,” then I outline it (if the idea lingers in my brain), and then I start writing and editing. Sometimes I’d sprint with my fellow writers on a server I’m in, and other times, I’d put on music and just let my brain go wild. Most of the time, I’m sprinting with friends. 

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? If I had the time, probably. I can see my Royal!AU series becoming an original story with different characters and an expanded plotline. What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? I am a sucker for F2L I (friends to lovers)! I just love the idea of dating someone who’s your best friend, so why not date your best friend, if the feelings are mutual of course! As for tropes, I dislike, I can’t say that I have any. I think it’s because (and I feel so bad for this), I don’t really read much stories other than what my mutual friends have written. 

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? It means the world to me because I do like knowing if I’m doing something right or if I need to go back and edit something for clarity. Mainly, I get likes and reblogs (with no feedback), and while it’s still nice of someone for taking the time to like and reblog something, I would like some feedback, please. I’m still grateful no matter what, though!

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? I think it’s the support of my amazing group of friends/mutuals! It’s thanks to their support that my work is reaching a wider audience, and it just means the world to me that they read my blood, sweat, and tears. I love them so much, especially my close friend, Jey (softjeon on Tumblr)!

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? For coffee, my go-to is a Caramel Macchiato with Soy Milk (from Starbucks), but lately I’ve been using my Keurig, so I just Peppermint Mocha and 3 tsps of Sugar (I can’t stand bitter coffee lol). For tea, I really like Mango green tea from Gongcha (another boba place chain). 

Dream job (whether you have a job or not)? My dream job is to be an elementary school teacher, however, I am currently working on becoming a social worker where my population will still focus on children/students. So, it’s a good compromise!

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?  If I could have one superpower, it would be cryokinesis aka ice manipulation!  

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? Oh, that’s a tough one, but if I had to choose one, I would go for the 1960s so I can see the Beatles live!

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? No, because it’s thanks to those life lessons that I grow up to be who I currently am. Sometimes you have to go through those harsh experiences to be a better version of yourself!

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? One horse-sized chicken, then I can feed my family for months. 

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? Oh, hands down, I would be the stereotypical geek/nerd. Though, I was called a “preppy” in 9th grade, so that was a first. 

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? Yup, especially ghosts! 

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I can say the alphabet backwards! 

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Oh, hands down, especially when it comes to writing smut. I’ve seen other blogs condemn writers who write smut about real people, but my thing is that these idols are merely face claims for a character that the author is writing about. 

Do you think art can be a medium for change? I think so! Every artist has a voice, especially with what’s going on recently, we need to be able to use our voices to spread light on certain issues. 

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? I used to think that way, especially when it came to writing x reader inserts since I know that’s what “sells” to the Tumblr audience. Now, I’m perfectly happy with writing x OC stories, and I’m content with my stories getting at least 5 notes. If it breaks 10 notes, then that’s a success!

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? If they did, then I wouldn’t know. Most of the time, I think my writing is okay with people. 

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? Yes, my soul friend managed my old blog once upon a time and actually read one of my smuts. I was so embarrassed! But at least he said it was tastefully written, so that’s a bonus? 

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? Always remember that it is okay to take breaks/go on hiatus! 

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? My advice to those who want to start writing but are too afraid put themselves out there is to simply go for it. I was that person who was afraid to put their writing out there for the world to see, especially with some already established BTS writers on Tumblr, but I went for it. At first, it might be discouraging but know that your mutuals/friends will always be your number one supporter! Use their support as a motivator to keep writing and finding your groove! Then, eventually, all of your readers will start trickling in and showering you with the love and support you deserve!

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? I wouldn’t say regret joining but more like allowing my life to be revolved around it. At one point in my life, it felt like a second job/chore for me, and Tumblr should never be that type of site! 

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? Oh, I have so many! The ones that come to mind are definitely Jey (softjeon), Beanie (jinned), Nina (j-sope), Kenz (parksfilter), Renae (mygsii), Atlas (astraljoon), & Niah (randomkoalablog) to name a few! I love these amazing people so much and cherish their friendship to the moon and back!

Pick a quote to end your interview with: "Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious … and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney

[concussed-to-pieces]

For The Pack; Epilogue

Fandom: WWE

Pairing: Alpha!Baron Corbin/Alpha!Roman Reigns/Omega!Female Reader

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Thirst Party Saturday, welcome to our epilogue! Happy Thanksgiving! Tagging @toxiicpop, @oraclegazes, queen @writergrrrl29 and naturally, king captain @hardcorewwetrash! (Fingers crossed on the tags as always!) Enjoy!

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: This installment contains mentions of labor and pregnancy (non-graphic) and parental strife.]

[!WARNING!: This is of the Alpha/Beta/Omega variety and involves knotting.]

Six Years Later…

The kitchen was bustling with activity. Nia bumped your hip with her own as she passed by with another plate, offering you a grin. You gave her a broad smile in return and continued doggedly hacking away at the butternut squash. You weren’t particularly good at this sort of thing, but you’d asked for something to do while Roman made his rounds with Victor and Baron had sat you down at the table with a cutting board and a particularly stubborn squash.

“How’s the pulverizing going, cutie?” The taller Alpha asked from his spot at the counter, a smudge of flour coating his hair from where he’d tucked it back behind his ear.

“I feel like you set me up to fail.” You huffed, making Baron chuckle and shrug.

“Only a little. Look, we want you to relax, okay?” Baron eased the dented squash away from you and leaned a majority of his weight on the knife, finally splitting the produce down the middle. “You shouldn’t have to help. This is a day off for you, cutie.”

“But-”

“No buts!” Roman’s mother chimed in, already working on cutting the squash into smaller pieces. “You’ve earned a rest.”

You sighed in defeat and Baron kissed your forehead. “Love you.” He murmured.

Roman sidled up to the doorway, the baby propped on his hip closely watching his face. “Baron, someone wanted to say hello.” Roman said in a singsong tone, “Victor misses his Dada.”

“Hey there champ, who’s my little dude?” Baron reached out and the toddler latched firmly onto his index finger, making him gasp in mock surprise. “Uh oh, I’ve been caught!”

Sometimes you wondered who the actual child was as you watched Roman grin while Baron played with his son. “Is he giving you trouble, Roman?” You asked worriedly. “I can take him, if you need me to.”

Roman shook his head. “Nah, it’s just kind of crowded out there and he was thinking about having a meltdown. I figured a little breather, a little visit with Dada and then we could mingle again.”

“You’re pretty good at this for never having done it before.” Baron commented, swinging Victor’s hand back and forth gently.

“Man, I helped raise half the damn living room. Cousins, cousins of cousins.” Roman shifted in place, seeming a little bashful. “I like this stuff.”

“And he’s good at it, too.” Mrs. Reigns added with a fond smile at her son.

“Mom…” Roman groaned.

“Don’t you mom me, buster! I love you and I know your strengths better than anyone else. Shush.” Mrs. Reigns untied Baron’s apron and gave him a gentle push towards the doorway. “You boys go in there, make sure Jimmy and Jey aren't causing trouble. I need to have a talk with your mate for a minute.”

“But the squash...” Baron started to protest.

“Honey I have been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive. Trust me, the squash will be fine. Take five minutes, enjoy some of the snacks.” Once Baron had reluctantly followed the other Alpha out of the room, Mrs. Reigns whirled on you. “Have you told them yet?!”

You shook your head. “I’m scared to.” You confessed, cringing at the look on her face. “I…what if it’s too much too soon?”

“Isn’t this what you and the boys wanted?” Mrs. Reigns’ eyes widened. “They didn’t hurt you, did they? Baron’s parents?”

“No, they ignored me. Ignored Victor too, because they don’t see him as Baron’s son.” Sadness threatened to close your throat. “We were going to stay overnight but we ended up leaving right after dinner. Roman was so angry about how they treated us he’s saying he doesn’t want to ever go back.”

“And Baron?” Mrs. Reigns pressed after a minute.

“He didn’t say anything the whole drive. He just held Victor’s hand. I don’t know what to do. I know he’ll respect my wishes if I say I don’t ever want to have to go through that again, but I don’t want to cut Baron off from his family.” You said helplessly. “He can’t deal with them alone. The way his parents get into his head about him not being able to have kids is criminal.” You sighed, rubbing your forehead. “I don't know what to do.”

“I’d like to give his mother a piece of my mind. Maybe introduce his father to Roman’s father.” Mrs. Reigns grumbled. “Wish Baron would just slug him.”

“You and me both.” You agreed.

Mrs. Reigns hugged you tightly after a moment, then held your shoulders so she could look you in the eyes. “I'm proud of you for being considerate of your Alpha. You need to take care of yourself right now, though. I would say be gentle to him, and be gentler to you.” She sighed. “You're lucky to have found these boys, really. They're both so kind.”

“I would say you're biased, but I know better.” You tied on Baron's apron, smiling at the woman who had easily maneuvered her way into a maternal role in your life. “Okay, give me something else to do!”

“You never quit, do you?” Mrs. Reigns chuckled.

…

Baron retreated from the doorway with a hand over his mouth to muffle his startled noise, your words ringing in his ears.

He can't deal with them alone.

I don’t want to cut Baron off from his family.

He didn’t say anything the whole drive.

What if it’s too much too soon?

He walked unsteadily back into the living room, accepting his son from one of the many cousins and dropping onto the couch. Roman came over after a short period of time with a plate of crackers and fruit, and they took turns plying the little boy with new things to try (after it had been safely pulped, of course).

“So...what’s wrong?” Roman asked quietly.

Baron had been hoping to avoid this conversation, but Roman could always read him like an open book. “I…our mate. They don’t want to deal with my parents again, but they’re willing to do it for me. Our Omega, trying to protect me.” Baron shook his head. “They don’t want me to lose my parents, even though I barely interact with them anyhow. Even after how rude my dad was to you two and Victor.”

“And you, by extension.” Roman reminded him. Baron shrugged but Roman persisted, “You don’t get it. Him disrespecting us is him disrespecting you. He may do it indirectly because you’re huge and he’s scared, or it may be a separation tactic to make me and our Omega feel like we’re getting picked on so that we turn on you. I’m just a dumb jock, dunno’ about all this intelligent stuff, but the writing’s on the wall here.”

“I’m not about that Kobayashi Maru shit, Reigns. I like battles I can win.”

“We’re here for you, Big Banter.” Roman said firmly. “We did the same thing for our Omega's parents, remember? My family loves you both. And you gotta' admit, Reigns is a pretty badass last name. Maybe even better than Corbin.”

Baron looked wide-eyed at the other man, who just winked at him. It was common in a bond with two Alphas that they would keep their own last names, since neither would be able to agree on who got the honor of being first should they hyphenate. It was also extremely rare that one would wholly surrender their last name. Mr. and Mrs. Reigns were a strange exception (in more ways than one Baron mused). A wild idea struck him and he wondered whether he could get new jerseys at this point in the season.

Victor started to squeal loudly at the football game on television and Roman scooped the little boy up. “What's wrong, tough stuff?” Reigns glanced at the screen and then made a face. “Oh, we're raising a traitor. I see.”

“He rooting for the other team?” Baron shook his head in mock disappointment when Roman nodded. “Victor, I thought I taught you better. Remember, we only boo the 'Niners when Papa isn't in the room.”

“Hey!”

...

The car ride to Roman's parents house had been quiet. You and Roman had left Baron in peace with Victor, you didn’t prod him to talk and he would be forever grateful. Victor had grabbed his hand, gurgling happily and Baron felt like a fraud. It was like his dad had said, “He’s not your whelp.” Victor obviously didn’t care, of course. The little boy had stared back at him with that quizzical expression, dark brown eyes that looked too big for his face wide as he studied the large Alpha.

A massive part of their culture was allowing one's sire or dam to hold offspring. In the old days, a sire would have deemed whether the pup was strong enough to live. Now, Baron didn't want his sire so much as looking at the baby, seeing as he had dismissed Victor mere seconds after the four of you had arrived. Roman seemed to understand (as always), the other Alpha still just as genial in the face of the incredible rudeness that was heaped upon him. Victor was more than happy to sit on his papa's lap and feast on a mishmash of carrots and potatoes.

He's not your whelp.

Baron had been in the delivery room with you, him on the left and Roman on the right while you labored. The doctor had handed Victor to Baron first, per your and Roman’s request. Corbin hadn’t known about that, he hadn’t really prepared himself for what to do now that Victor was here and in his arms. He just...stood there with the squalling pup all swaddled up, marveling in silence at the lung power of the tiny addition.

Baron hadn't noticed he was crying until Roman gently wiped a tear off his face and touched their foreheads together. “He’s yours now, Baron.” Baron had softly traced Victor's reddened, cranky features, an unfamiliar sensation making his breath catch in his throat.

Your smile for the two of them was hazy with exhaustion, your skin flushed with your efforts and your face still wet with tears. Baron realized suddenly that the weird feeling was pride. You and Roman had created a pup, even though you always had both Baron and Roman during your heat. You had whelped successfully. Victor was a healthy baby according to the nurse.

Baron hadn’t ruined anything.

That had always been his biggest fear, that he would somehow cause the two of you grief when it came to conception. After you had come to him and Roman with your eyes full of love, body singing with heat and you had said you were ready to try…Baron had felt his heart break a little. He would never be able to give you what you wanted. At best, he would just make it more difficult for Reigns.

He's not your whelp.

Roman had taken him aside one night after the two of them had soothed you back to sleep during your pregnancy. He didn’t say anything, but he had Baron curl up into his side and he stroked the other Alpha’s hair while they watched a little mind-numbing television.

“I’m sorry I’m like this.” Baron had whispered finally.

“Never apologize for that again.” Roman had ordered sharply. “You are my mate, the mate of our mate. You were first, remember?” He referred to the imprint, rumbling when Baron buried his face in his side. “You were first.”

“I wish my parents were like yours, Reigns.”

“My parents have grown a hell of a lot in a short period of time, Corbin. I'm impressed with their progress, and I know how incredibly lucky we are to have them.” Roman sighed. “They were never that bad to begin with, but I feel like having our Omega-mate present all the time really sped the process along.” He had resumed stroking Baron's hair while the television carried on in the background.

“They're not going to be my kid, Roman.” Baron hated how small and shaky his voice was.

“The hell they aren't.” Roman growled, gently swatting the larger Alpha upside the head. “Your name is going on that fucking birth certificate, Baron. Sandwiched in between your mates. You're gonna' be a dad. You're gonna' be a great dad.”

“I'm scared.”

“You think I'm not? Fuck man, I'm terrified. Anything could go wrong!” Roman had outright laughed, tugging Baron's chin up so he could rub their foreheads together. “We're in this together, Baron. We have to be strong for our Omega. They're working so hard to keep the pup healthy, least we can do is give them a stable den environment, y'know?”

“I know. I don't want them knowing that I'm scared.” Baron had wrapped an arm around Roman's shoulders. “I have no regrets when it comes to you guys. You know that. I'm so grateful for everything...I don't know, just everything. Thank you.”

“You're our Alpha. I'm your Alpha, they're our Omega. We're your pack, Baron. Us and our pup. No matter what your family thinks.”

...

Roman gripped the steering wheel tightly. Beside him, Baron clenched his fists and stared straight ahead. They had left their mate and son behind for the night, left them with the other Alphas and Betas. Their Omega and pup would be safe with Roman’s family. “We’re doing this, Big Banter.” Roman said firmly.

“We’re doing this for us.” Baron reached over and put a hand on Roman’s thigh. “For you. For your son, for our mate.”

“For you. For our son and our mate.” Roman covered the other man’s hand after a moment. “Mate of my mate, heart of my heart. Never thought all that formal shit would lead to this.” He chuckled.

“I’m glad you’re here with me.”

“I’m glad you wanted me here.” Roman gave the taller Alpha a curious look. “When do you think they’ll tell us?”

“I don’t know. Not sure how long it’s been.” Baron growled low in his throat. “And I’m sure the way my parents treated them went leaps and bounds towards the worry-about-our-reaction department.”

“Hey, we know and that’s what matters. We’ll be careful with them. That’s what we’re here for.” Roman put the car into park and cracked his knuckles. “You ready?”

“Maybe I should have done this over the phone.” Baron mused worriedly.

“It’s not too late to do that, man. I’m behind you no matter what, okay?” Roman encouraged.

Baron wordlessly squared his shoulders after a minute and jerked open his door. Roman shook his head with a wry grin and followed his mate up the winding sidewalk once Baron ripped the large gate open.

Baron entirely ignored the doorbell, hammering his fist on the front door. The noise echoed eerily. It was strange to see a house dark and quiet on Thanksgiving. “I know you’re home, sire!” Baron yelled after a minute, startling Roman with both his volume and dated terminology. “Come down here and talk to me or I’m coming up there to drag you down, old man!” Baron shoved the door open, letting it hit the wall beside it as he moved inside.

There was the thunder of footsteps overhead and Roman braced for impact like he was on the football field. “Mutt!” Mr. Corbin roared from the top of the stairs, sounding absolutely infuriated. Baron visibly flinched at the slur and Reigns barely caught himself before he shoved the larger man behind him. The urge to protect his Alpha, his Alpha rang loud in his head and he started growling without intending to. “How dare you come into my house--” Mr. Corbin went to continue indignantly.

“Lord knows you’ve made it abundantly fuckin' clear that I ain’t welcome!” Baron interrupted, raising his voice over his father’s. “The way you disrespected me, disrespected my mates and my son, I’m well fucking aware that I’m not welcome old man!”

“That pup is not yours-”

“He’s just as much my son as he is Roman’s, mate of my mate!” Baron cut his father off again, “If you and Mom can’t accept that, then I want nothing to do with either of you!” His voice cracked as he shouted the words, then he fell silent.

Mr. Corbin just stood there, his mouth gone slack.

“We refuse to willingly subject our son and our Omega to the emotional abuse you and your mate are so adept at dishing out. I refuse to subject my Alpha to it.” Roman said firmly, realizing that Baron was seconds from bursting into infuriated tears and doing his best to keep the situation under control. “If you want to cut us out of your lives, know that we’re taking Baron with us. He’s our mate and we love him. We’re not leaving him with a pack that ignores him or treats him as lesser because he can’t procreate.”

“He is lesser, he’s a disappointment!” Baron’s father finally seemed to regain his voice. “Look at him! He should be the perfect specimen, but instead he’s a sterile mutt!” He spat.

Baron started towards his father and the older man cringed back. “Oh don’t you run from me, after the years of crap you put me through you don’t get to run from me.” Baron snarled. “The perfect specimen? The perfect fucking specimen? That’s all I ever was to you, right? You wanted a sire pup, an Alpha like you.” Baron made a noise of disgust. “But you can’t breed me. So I’m just a mutt now, and you’re just the guy who knocked someone else up to get back at your wife for refusing you in bed.”

He gestured at the stairs where Mrs. Corbin stood, the woman silently watching the altercation between Baron and his father.

“I can understand why Mom would hate me. I can definitely understand that. I’m a living, breathing embodiment of the consequences of getting into a domestic disagreement with her mate. The mate that promised to love, cherish and defend her like he should.” Baron’s voice trembled. “But you're both unfit company for my pack.”

“You have the nerve to-”

“Yes we do.” Roman growled, teeth bared in warning when Baron's father took a step closer.

“You don't get to talk anymore, Dad. I've spent all these years listening. It's your turn now.” Baron's eyes strayed to his mother momentarily. “You always said I wasn't yours and then in the next breath you'd tell me to call you Mom. An indiscretion, inconvenience.” He shook his head. “You're a real piece of work, but you still aren't as bad as Dad. I'm his blood, and even that wasn't enough to keep me safe once he figured out I wasn't carrying on his line.” His fists clenched tight at his sides. “I came here with the intent of kicking the shit out of him for disrespecting my pack.”

Mr. Corbin swallowed hard, glancing at his wife. Roman wanted to laugh at the scathing look she gave right back to him. “Now Baron, there's no need to be rude.” The older man said weakly.

“As rude as you were to our Omega, my Alpha and our pup?” Baron spat. “Or as rude as you yelling mutt at the top of your lungs like that's my name?” He grabbed two fistfuls of his father's shirt. “As rude as me putting my hands on you? I want to make myself as clear as you've been with telling me I and my mates are unwelcome. You are unwelcome in my life from this point forward. I'm not going to dish out the beating you so richly deserve because I know better than to ruin everything that I have with an act done out of anger or spite.” Baron all but tore the words apart with his teeth, biting them out savagely.

It was still a surprise to Roman when Baron chose to speak for long periods of time, especially when he delivered drawn out, blistering retorts. It was also a joy to witness.

Baron finally released his father and stepped back. “Enjoy your quiet house. Reigns and I have a family to go home to.” The tall man turned briskly and made his exit with Roman in tow, the other Alpha a little awestruck.

Roman caught Baron's arm before the larger Alpha could get into the car and wrapped him in a massive bear hug, a hand moving up to cradle the back of Corbin's neck. “Jesus Christ, Big Banter.” He murmured, feeling Baron's shoulders shudder.

“Thought I was gonna' puke.” Baron admitted. He dug his face into Roman's shoulder, drawing a few shaky breaths. “Holy shit. We did it.”

“You did it. I just basked in the presence of prime Alpha male posturing and loved every fucking second of it.” Roman pressed his mouth to Baron's neck, breathing harder than he meant to. Corbin gripped him just as fiercely, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of Roman's neck to tug his head back. He ducked his own face in a display of submission and nosed over the other Alpha's throat, getting a soft groan out of Roman. “Oh-”

“Take me home, Reigns.” Baron implored.

…

You were stirred out of a doze by the sound of heavy boots and clothes on the floor of your bedroom. A kiss landed hungrily on your mouth, then those lips trailed further down. You hummed, dragging your fingers through Roman's hair. “Where'd you guys go?” You asked sleepily. “You missed bedtime stories with Victor.”

“Big Banter went to talk with his parents.”

Your drowsiness vanished abruptly and you shoved Roman back a few inches so you could see his face. “Talk?” You asked in confusion.

“There's a few wrinkles to iron out. Long and short of it is that I flayed my father alive and my parents are no longer welcome around my pack.” Baron said curtly. “Uh, verbally flayed him alive.” He amended quickly, no doubt seeing your expression of horror. “I'm not letting anyone belittle my family like they did.”

“So...”

“I'm not putting myself or you and Roman through that again.” Baron crushed your body against his own. “My mate, my heart.”

“But-” Baron's kiss silenced you momentarily and you found yourself melting beneath him, fingers digging into his shoulders. “Are you two okay?” You managed to ask. “They didn't hurt you, right?”

“Baron put the fear of God into his sire, holy shit.” Roman gushed, tousling Baron's already-messy hair.

“Is that a bruise or a hickey, Mr. Reigns?” You snickered, pointing to Roman's throat where a suspiciously-mouth shaped dark spot resided. Baron flushed across his shoulders while Roman coughed awkwardly. “You guys are impossible.”

“You bet, Omega.” Roman grinned, tugging your panties down your legs until you could kick them off. “Impossibly turned on.”

“You did that thing again, didn't you?” You asked Baron, making the larger Alpha tilt his head.

“What thing?”

“Damn right he did.” Your mates spoke in unison, Roman laughing and shoving Baron's shoulder afterwards. “Don't even try to play that off, Big Banter, you know what they mean! That thing where you go full apex mode and you just obliterate someone.”

“O-oh.” Baron stammered. “I...well yeah, I guess I did.”

You arched your back with a squeak and buried your fingers in Roman's hair as he moved straight to enthusiastically eating you out. “You got him all riled up.” You sighed, trying to sound annoyed. It was increasingly difficult, Roman was very good at what he did.

Baron knew this, of course, his fingers hooking your own in Roman's hair. The other Alpha moaned against you, whining as Baron firmly directed him to where you needed the pressure of his tongue. “That's it, Reigns, get them off with your sweet little mouth.” Baron ordered and Roman was too happy to oblige.

You moved to play with your breasts and Baron was there again, the larger Alpha grabbing your shirt with his teeth and dragging it up over your chest.

“You are ours.” He snarled before circling one of your nipples with his tongue. You whimpered and bucked down against Roman's eager mouth, writhing under the attention of your Alphas. “I'm never making you feel like you need to choose something that makes you uncomfortable, never again. From now on, it's what's best for you and Roman.” Baron promised, his tone softening. “What's best for Victor.”

“What's best for my Alphas and pups.” You gasped, loving the smile that Baron couldn't fight. “What's best for my pack.”

Baron closed his eyes, ducking his head a little. Roman's hand palmed over the back of his neck, large fingers spread wide to firmly claim the skin there. You keened at the display of brazen dominance and the way Baron easily accepted it, no snapping or snarling. “Come for us, Omega.” Roman growled against you, his tongue tormenting your clit mercilessly. “Come.”

“We need you to come, we need that from you, Omega-mate, and you need it too.” Baron murmured, finding his way back to your breast and latching on gently.

“'Pups', huh?” Roman asked softly after you muffled your hungry cry with your shirt, your body still trembling from coming. “Last I checked, all we had was Victor. Something you need to tell us, Omega?” He continued, his fingers tracing a pattern on your stomach.

You froze and both of them felt it, if Roman's noise of confusion and Baron's hitch of breath was any indicator. You hid your face with your shirt, the warmth of your orgasm dissolving into the hot flash of worry and panic.

“Oh no, Omega, don't...look, it's okay.” Baron soothed, tugging at your shirt so he could see your eyes. “Shh, it's okay. You wanted to tell us, didn't you?”

“I did.” You mumbled, wishing the bed would swallow you up. This wasn't exactly the scenario you'd had in mind.

“So...?” Roman trailed off, resting his head on your stomach. His smirk was ridiculously self-satisfied, your arousal coating his mouth and facial hair liberally. He made a bit of a lewd display out of licking his lips, the tease that he was. Baron just waited silently for you to speak, black-brown eyes radiating concern and affection in equal parts.

“I'm uh. I went to go see the doctor.” You began.

Roman instantly pounced, the self-satisfaction fading to worry. “Are you okay?”

You nodded. “She says that we're doing fine. And that I'm um...further along than she expected.”

Reigns laughed in relief, hugging you around the midsection. “I knew it!”

Baron sighed, dropping his face heavily into the crook of your neck. “Is there anything we need to do for you?” He mumbled against your jaw, making you giggle as his mouth tickled your skin. “Anything, just say the word.”

“Well...come June you guys may need to put in for some time off.”

“Done and done. I'll call my coach tomorrow.” Baron grunted. “Did the doctor say what uh. What the pup was, yet?”

“S' a little early for that, Big Banter.” Roman pointed out. “Remember how Victor was?”

“I do, I...sorry, cutie. Dumb question.” Baron apologized and you shook your head, rubbing your nose against his fondly.

“Never be sorry for being excited, Baron.” You pushed the hair out of his eyes, not surprised anymore by how emotional he got when it came to your pack. Baron sniffled and Roman hummed, cupping Baron's face.

“It's weird.” Baron choked out after a minute. “I know I'm Alpha and I shouldn't get all fucked up over this stuff.”

“If it makes you happy, what the hell does it matter?” Roman asked bluntly, “We feel deep with other emotions besides rage, y'know. Fuck anyone who thinks that being Alpha is all about the yelling in each others faces.”

“I know. I've been trying. It's still a little difficult for me, wasn't raised like you Reigns.”

“Ha! Don't you start with me. We broke each others noses on day one of tryouts, Big Banter. I can slip right into bullshit Alpha mode with the best of 'em.” Roman teased, getting a tiny smile out of the larger Alpha. “That's what you get for chuckin' a helmet at my head, you disrespectful ass.”

“We sat in that Beta nurse's office and stared each other down for ages.” Baron chuckled. “Reigns' nose was all swollen and mine was just...shit, pouring blood. Mostly because I refused to tilt my head. Would have broken eye contact.”

“Alpha male posturing at its finest.” Roman agreed. “Then, this big fucker sticks his hand out and says, 'Man, I'm gonna' pass out so we'd better kiss and make up if we plan on making the team.' We shook hands and that was the end of it.”

“Aw, no kiss?” You joked, making Baron snort.

“We were saving them for you, cutie.”

“I mean, there were rumors of course.” Roman ruffled Baron's hair. “Especially when he transferred into my dorm after one semester.”

“You asked me to! Said your old roommate was a nightmare.”

“Fair enough. You're the one that always had the weird wood smoke smell, though.”

“You smell like a white girl's Starbucks order, you thick-waisted fuck.” Baron ribbed the other Alpha and Roman began to laugh.

“What do I smell like?” You asked curiously.

Roman shot Baron a look and the larger Alpha inclined his head, indicating that Reigns should go first. Roman took a second to touch your forehead with his own, eyes half-closed. “You're home. You're the smell of home. At first, to me, you smelled like citrus. Roses. Then it got more complicated. You started smelling like...I don't know. There's a certain feeling I get when I walk in the door here, when I come home. If that feeling had a smell...” Roman paused, shaking his head. “Sorry. I don't really know how to explain it.”

“You smell like the first rough play of the season. You smell like excitement. You smell like mine and ours and the inhale of winter air that tingles in your lungs for a second. You smell like good memories I can't exactly pin down, but I know they're there. You smell like things I thought were forbidden to me, like the pack I was pretty sure I'd never have. The family I always dreamed about.” Baron's voice was intense and shook a little. “You smell like early morning sunlight and slick mouths and lazy days. You smell like hungry and want, ache in the pit of my stomach when I need you and Reigns.”

Your body had relaxed while you let Baron's words wash over you, and you heard Roman groan softly. “Fucking...still gets me every time, man.”

“Why do you think I save it for special occasions?” Baron asked, parting your legs and settling between them. “Is this alright, Omega?”

“Yes.” You looped your arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, your thighs tightly gripping his hips as you welcomed him into you. “Roman, can I...?” You tapped your lower lip and Reigns huffed out a breath.

“Yeah? While he fucks you?” The other Alpha growled, “Greedy tonight.”

“I know.” You replied simply, smiling up at him before he obliged you with his cock in your mouth.

Baron immediately started thrusting harder, his hold tightening as he watched you go down on Roman. “Fuck.” He abruptly snarled, “Cutie, please, I...fuck, please, please.”

Roman grabbed a handful of Baron's hair, rumbling in his chest when Baron arched his back. “What's the matter, Big Banter?” Roman bared his teeth. “Kiss them.” Your eyes widened when Baron ducked down to sloppily lick Roman's knot, kissing you afterwards. Reigns shuddered bodily. “Oh, not fair, not fucking fair, shit, I thought you were going to pull them off my cock!” He moaned while the two of you maneuvered your mouths on him.

“You're not the only Alpha here, Reigns.” Baron said curtly, mouthing over the other Alpha's knot again. You had never been able to fit all of Roman into your mouth, and you wondered dimly why you hadn't thought of this. “You are mine.” Baron snarled, spit dripping off his chin. “You are mine, my pack, my Alpha, my Omega.”

“That's not fair, Baron, I'm so worked up from eating them out, you can't just fucking toy with me like this.” Roman pleaded, his dick twitching in your mouth.

“And I watched you eat them out, watched your face go all smug and satisfied when they came for you.” Baron retorted. “Do you have any idea how attractive the two of you are when you get like that? Your dazed little smile, the way you just bury your face in our Omega until they squeal for you?”

You whimpered around Roman's cock, nodding as best as you could. Baron boldly cupped Roman's balls and the other Alpha cried out, struggling to hold still when you took him down even deeper. “Omega-!”

“You potent fuck.” Baron grunted, his knot pistoning feverishly in and out of you. “You're going to come down their throat, understand?”

That was all it took, Roman gritting his teeth against the helpless noises he made as he came hard in your mouth. Your eyes rolled back, your body singing with need for your Alphas. Baron rumbled in his chest when you came a second later, the larger Alpha pulling out of you and coming on your stomach with a low groan of completion.

“Fuck.” Roman sighed. “I love you.” He kissed your forehead, smiling. You smiled back, thoroughly exhausted. Baron bit Roman's inked shoulder gently and Roman chuckled. “And you, Baron, easy with the teeth.”

As if on cue, Victor began to fuss in his room next door. Baron caught Roman's arm before the other Alpha could slide off the bed. “Let me. You stay with them, I'll be back.” Baron said quietly, pecking you on the mouth and then moving to quickly pull his pants and shirt back on.

You relaxed against Roman after he tugged his boxers up, yawning widely. “So what happened?” You asked, giggling when Roman coughed again. “I mean, I know he must have gone full Alpha male, but was there anything else?”

“We talked a lot on the car ride home. He...well, you saw. He thinks about stuff like that.” Roman swallowed hard. “I uh...shit, I dunno', he's got some ideas, Omega. He didn't want to say anything because he didn't want to make you feel like this is stuff that we need to do. He understands that you're priority.”

Baron returned with Victor in his arms, the toddler sniffling and rubbing his eyes. “See, they're right here.” Baron cajoled the small boy, bumping their foreheads together. “You're a silly billy sometimes, little worrywart.”

“Wa?” Victor asked, still scrubbing at his face.

Baron rolled his eyes, making both you and Roman laugh. “Fine.” He put his son down on the floor, holding his hands so he could walk. “God, you just have me whipped, don't you? Can't wait until you're a teenager and you hate my guts.”

“Baron also mentioned he was strongly considering taking my last name.” Roman continued.

“I'm not considering anything.” The larger Alpha grumbled, making Victor giggle. “I'm doing it. I'll go to your sire and ask. Hell, I'll do it tomorrow. Call my coach, ask Roman's dad for his last name, all in a day's work. I'll have to get new jerseys though.” He paused, glancing over at you and Roman curled up on the bed. His mouth curved into a smile. “Y'know, for the pack.”

For the pack.

AN: I never expected this tale to even make it past the first chapter. I'm immensely grateful that you (yes you!) gave me the opportunity to expand upon this silly idea. Thank you Thirsty Crew. I'll see you guys next time.

[placetobenation]

RIP Jon Huber.

Words can’t do justice. To all that knew him, he was a devoted father, husband and wrestling superstar. Gone far too young at the age of 41 due to a non-COVID-19 lung issue. We’ll always remember Brodie Lee, Luke Harper and Jon Huber.

Kudos to All Elite Wrestling for a tremendous tribute Wednesday night on TNT. Extremely well done on every front.

This one's for you #BrodieLee pic.twitter.com/2wNFJEK82y

— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) December 31, 2020

A tribute to #BrodieLee #AEWDynamite pic.twitter.com/ZptMKH1Hst

— All Elite Wrestling on TNT (@AEWonTNT) December 31, 2020

The WWE also released a tribute after AEW’s show.

Husband. Father. Friend. Superstar. WWE Superstars & friends pay tribute to Jon Huber. (via @WWE) pic.twitter.com/8CUd1fQnwZ

— WWE on FOX (@WWEonFOX) December 31, 2020

RAW

RESULTS

Keith Lee defeated Sheamus to win shot at WWE Championship

Gran Metalik defeated The Miz

Shayna Baszler defeated Dana Brooke

AJ Styles defeated Elias

Mustafa Ali defeated Ricochet

Charlotte Flair defeated Nia Jax by DQ

The Hurt Business defeated The New Day, Jeff Hardy & Riddle

WHAT is @AlexaBliss_WWE thinking? WHAT is @RandyOrton thinking?!#WWERaw pic.twitter.com/tBXlzsBHve

— WWE (@WWE) December 29, 2020

Alexa Bliss vs. Randy Orton

That was something I will say that. I didn’t know whether to love it, hate it or just walk away from it. Yes, it was some sight seeing Alexa Bliss call out Randy Orton, begging him to light her on fire as he did to The Fiend. Of course, we don’t know whether Orton dropped the match to a fully engulfed with gas Bliss as the show ended. It was indeed a true cliffhanger in that mode. But, do we really believe that Orton would now intentionally murder two people on national TV? I’m not quite sure, other than shock value, what the WWE is looking for with this angle. We’ll all see Monday night for the next episode of RAW.

Thumbs Up:

Keith Lee vs. Sheamus was as good as expected. I really did think it was going to be Sheamus going over in this one, but I do think it works better having Lee get another shot at McIntyre while Sheamus stews the defeat and puts off an encounter with his BFF for a bit.

.@AliWWE: "Join RETRIBUTION. What is your decision?@KingRicochet: #WWERaw pic.twitter.com/PJcAGuQDjs

— WWE (@WWE) December 29, 2020

AJ Styles vs. Elias was very good. Good to see two “bad guys” go at it and just get after it without the old heel cliches. Mustafa Ali vs. Ricochet was its usual good stuff. I wish they would come to a resolution to the matter as its not helping either side with the same ol’ story each week. I’d like to see a darker side or Ricochet in my mind. Take off the masks from RETRIBUTION and form a true stable that has a chance to do something.

They were right all along…@mikethemiz is ONCE AGAIN Mr. Money in the Bank! #WWERaw @TheRealMorrison pic.twitter.com/Xvt6T6VHYl

— WWE (@WWE) December 29, 2020

The Miz getting his Money In The Bank briefcase back is a good thing. Having him lose to Gran Metalik to bring him down wasn’t needed. It only would’ve made sense to bring The Miz down if they had dragged it out for a couple of weeks. Having him down for about an hour or so did nothing. They need to build The Miz up to more than a cartoon character of comedy to truly be a challenger worthy of Drew McIntyre’s WWE Championship.

Thumbs Down:

Charlotte Flair vs. Nia Jax – I just can’t get behind anything that Nia Jax is doing these days. Charlotte Flair is The Queen, but there’s no flow or chemistry when these two get together. Why waste it? And another thing. Let Shayna Baszler be a bad ass by herself. It would work better for her.

Angel Garza. Please, I’m begging them to stop the romancing the rose storyline. It’s been old since they started it back around WrestleMania. It’s even older now. It’s doing nothing to move Garza forward. At least he got the 24/7 Championship victory over R-Truth on Tik Tok!

NXT

RESULTS

Bronson Reed defeated Isaiah “Swerve” Scott

Grizzled Young Veterans defeated Breezango

Mercedes Martinez defeated Valentina Feroz

Pete Dunn defeated Roderick Strong

Lucha House Party defeated Legado del Fantasma

NXT North American Championship Match: Johnny Gargano defeated Leon Ruff to retain the title

.@Lady_Scarlett13 likes what she sees.

#WWENXT @WWEKarrionKross @ArcherOfInfamy pic.twitter.com/mUjkxY9r29

— WWE NXT (@WWENXT) December 31, 2020

Thumbs Up:

Pete Dunne vs. Roderick Strong. The rivalry continues between the Kings of NXT and The Undisputed Era. Dunne’s look really good the past couple of weeks in singles competition against TUE. As for Roddy, well, he continues to be Strong.

The Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic is back!#WWENXThttps://t.co/JJ72EIWNb1

— WWE (@WWE) December 31, 2020

Another year of the Dusty Rhodes Classic. Adam Cole and Roderick Strong make an interesting entry. I’d love to see WWE bring in a few teams from outside NXT to make things interesting too.

"It means something to me. To me, it's proof. Not only proof that I belong in the ring with you, but proof that I belong at the top of #WWENXT." You deserve it, @KORcombat. #WWENXT #NXTAwardMatch @FinnBalor #NXTYearEndAwards pic.twitter.com/JyI8HPBvse

— WWE (@WWE) December 31, 2020

A wild brawl just broke out between @WWEKarrionKross & @ArcherofInfamy on #WWENXT! pic.twitter.com/bVm6lB7sHt

— WWE (@WWE) December 31, 2020

Balor vs. O’Reilly. That’s about as good as it gets on the mic with these two. You could feel the passion, the reality, the urgency and yes, we’re ready for round 2! Adding Karrion Kross into the mix with Scarlett just puts it over the top. Doomsday is here. Tick. Tock. Oh, hi Damien Priest. That was a very good segment!

Rhea vs. Raquel vignette. The Last Woman Standing match is going to be awesome. Let’s just say that New Year’s Evil is stacked folks!

Highway Robbery:

Shotzi Blackheart over Pat McAfee for Breakout Star of the Year. There’s no bigger Shotzi fan than me, but even I can admit that McAfee took NXT by Storm and is a star in the making. He proved it on the mic, behind the scenes and yes, even in the ring during WarGames. Here’s hoping the WWE doesn’t keep him on the shelf too long.

Lucha Like!

Gran Metalik & Lince Dorado showing up to take on Legado del Fantasmo was a cool surprise. Long live Lucha Libre! Pretty cool week for Gran Metalik with wins on both RAW and NXT over 48 hours.

Meh:

Year-end awards presentation. They were kind of just there. Obviously, the tie-in with Balor vs. O’Reilly for the match of the year was a home run to set up their in-ring promo. All the rest, I could’ve done with online.

Johnny Gargano’s curse-breaking win over Leon Ruff did what it needed to do. That’s about all.

SMACKDOWN

RESULTS

Non-title Intercontinental Championship Match: Big E defeated King Corbin by DQ

Big E & Apollo Crews defeated Sami Zayn & King Corbin

The Riott Squad defeated Tamina & Natalya

Carmella & Bayley defeated Sasha Banks & Bianca Belair

Otis & Daniel Bryan defeated Cesaro & Shinsuke Nakamura

Kevin Owens defeated Jey Uso

Another level:

.@WWERomanReigns just sent @FIghtOwensFight crashing inside the #WWEThunderDome!!!#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/Xz2e8JCqqH

— WWE (@WWE) January 2, 2021

Sure, on its face, another Kevin Owens vs. Jey Uso match seems like filler. But, oh no. Not when the Head of the Table is involved! First off, Owens and Uso beat the snot out of each other with KO getting the expected knockout victory. Then, and you could see Roman Reigns foreshadow it earlier in the show by saying “they” don’t understand, “they’re” trying to take away what we have, Reigns was going to get Owens for making a match against Reigns’ wishes. Every week, they take the best angle in the WWE up a notch! It’s the very first attack through the ThunderDome crowd! I’ll be honest though, I thought Adam Pearce was in danger of an attack too. Maybe that’s next week?

Thumbs Up:

.@WWEBigE and @WWEApollo pick up the win on #SmackDown! pic.twitter.com/5tXhcI6UqE

— WWE (@WWE) January 2, 2021

I like the way they are bringing a lot of people into the mix for Big E’s Intercontinental Title run. Sami Zayn as former champ, King Corbin as first challenge and now Apollo Crews as friend and Open Challenge acceptor for next week will keep it fresh. Zayn is awesome no matter what and making Big E look strong out of the gate will eventually make him a contender for Roman Reigns’ Universal Championship.

The Riott Squad keeps winning. After months of going nowhere, it’s good to see Liv Morgan and Ruby Riott on a winning streak even if it is beating Tamina and Natalya with the help of the annoying one, Billie Kay. There’s got to be a better way to use Billie, right?

#SmackDown Women's Champion @SashaBanksWWE has encountered an obstacle in this tag team match… a negative one! pic.twitter.com/9lqE7jV4Om

— WWE (@WWE) January 2, 2021

Sasha. Carmella. Bianca. Bayley. Getting them all together in the same ring makes Friday night a winner for all of us. Loved that Carmella gets the pin to get her some juice back after losing at TLC. Damn, Reggie has some moves! Can’t wait to see him in a ring soon too!

WOAH. @SonyaDevilleWWE is BACK on #SmackDown! pic.twitter.com/AcId1KWFDV

— WWE (@WWE) January 2, 2021

Sonya Deville is back! That’s good for business although we do need an explanation as to how one loses a loser leaves town match and then returns back so soon. We know the reality of it due to her stalking case, but how the WWE plays it on TV will be interesting.

I could’ve done without the drums and the predictions, but that was one helluva beatdown by Robert Roode and Dolph Ziggler on TSP. The Dirty Dawgs deserve some gold in their future!

Interesting:

Otis & Daniel Bryan teaming up was fun. Chad Gable + the YES movement sure is inspirational. Will it be more than a one-time effort? Even Otis looks better with Bryan, Cesaro and Shinsuke Nakamura in the same ring. The three amigos salute at the end was hilarious!

Annoying:

Billie Kay’s gimmick.  

Parting Shots:

With so many tag teams forming on the fly in the WWE these days, I’d love to see an old-school Crockett Cup tournament in the WWE. Take it across all three brands, maybe bring in some indy teams as well and I think it would be a fun event for 2021. There’s absolutely room to make some odd and unique pairings and match-ups instead of the old and tired matches.

Coming up this week:

RAW Legends Night WWE Championship Match: Drew McIntyre vs. Keith Lee

NXT – New Year’s Evil hosted by Dexter Lumis NXT Championship: Finn Balor vs. Kyle O’Reilly Damien Priest vs. Karrion Kross Fight Pit Match: Tommaso Ciampa vs. Timothy Thatcher Last Woman Standing: Rhea Ripley vs. Raquel Gonzalez NXT Cruiserweight Championship: Santos Escobar vs. Gran Metalik

SMACKDOWN Intercontinental Championship Match: Big E vs. Apollo Crews

Thanks for letting us share our thoughts! Shoot me an email at jcrowe567@gmail.com. We’d love to hear your comments and suggestions! You can also check out my blog, The Crowe’s Nest as we delve into more pro wrestling, sports entertainment and the World of Sports. My apologies ahead of time – I AM a Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins fan! If you’re not down with that, I’ve got TWO WORDS for you… NEW ENGLAND

[nogoodmox]

i'm offended no one has asked about deano, and if someone already asked deano, then fred's fav boy finn

javi,,, i was dreading this ask bc i truly wasn’t prepared to write an essay on dean ambrose today. i probably shouldn’t have put this off bc now i’m tired from writing the other so…i’m gonna try to keep this short /:

uhh dean was the reason i got back into wrestling? i’ve been a fan since i was about 9, but i would have a lot of on-and-off periods where i’d stop watching for a few months then start up again later. so the longest break i ever took was around 2 years, and it was because of dean that i started watching again. since then, i’ve had a lot of 3-6 months periods where i lose interest in wrestling, but it’s always him that pulls me back into it.

he means a great deal to me but like…when it comes to voicing it i’m not really sure how to do it without throwing a bunch of adjectives at you that should somehow explain why i like him.

 i have a weird liking for shield dean for some reason. he was really loud and twitchy and restless and he had a really weird way of talking. like his voice patterns were all over the place and i was fond of that for some reason? he also had a really erratic way of moving in the ring and he seemed to be the one who enjoyed wreaking havoc the most. he was just the problem child ig. 

i love post-shield dean just as much of course. the way he changed after seth’s betrayal was really something to watch and it affected me a lot for some reason made me all the more absorbed in his character. i didn’t like the ableist stuff they started to use as his gimmick but i loved everything he did with it. 

i love the way he jokes and seems lighthearted and goofy but he can get intense when he needs to and he’s not just some dumb, ~crazy~, clueless guy, he’s very smart in his own ways and he’s a survivor and he knows how to take care of himself, but at the same time friendship and belonging do admittedly mean something to him. we really got to see that with how close he is with roman and his eagerness to call jimmy and jey his cousins during the bloodline days. i love how he just genuinely loves to fight, but he’s not just some ball of aggression that goes after anyone. i like that he has his own weird set of morals and that he’s really and truly good at heart but doesn’t always know the means to accomplish that good. 

i like his mannerisms a lot too. my favorites are when he rolls his shoulders or paces or when he taps on his collarbone. i also like when he drops the mic before he finishes speaking or his hand gestures or when he jerks around in the ring and thinks it’s dancing. he’s just so bizarre and and kinda lame but he’s really cool when he gets riled up and i love listening to him talk. his promos aren’t always the best bc wwe sucks at writing but when he gets the chance to really tap into his essence he blows me away. 

i dunno. i like that he’s so multidimensional. he’s unpredictable and his character has many layers to it, he’s not always gonna react to things a certain way, it depends on the situation and that’s very human to me. i like that he’s careless and fun-loving and sometimes cheeky but also over-zealous and easily lost in his emotions and aggressive when he needs to be. he’s just a lot of things at once. he’s simple and goofy or eccentric and hard to understand. and the shifts between these things never seem unrealistic, at least to me. and from what we’ve seen of him outside of the ring, he’s a very laid back and subtle and somewhat quiet guy so the fact that he plays his character so well is so impressive to me.

i find him relatable a lot of times which is strange because i don’t think we have a lot of similarities. but we’re both kinda twitchy and always tapping things and talking either way too much or not very much. and we like messing around and prefer to have fun and be with friends and ignoring problems instead of thinking abt them and being emotional because when we are it’s way too much and overdramatic and pointlessly intense. this last part kinda doesn’t make sense but what i mean is basically i mostly love him, but i also relate to him in some ways. i wish it were more but i’m not really cool enough lol

this is a really rambly post i’m sorry. i ended up pretty much just describing what i think of him and it’s not even really insightful or in detail but yeah those are just some adjectives about dean ambrose i guess. thank you for asking javi i love you and him very much and i’m sorry that none of this really makes sense or explains how i feel about him /: 

[avatarconlangs]

So what sites do you use to come up with inspiration for your phrases? Like im trying to make a conlang but idk where to start. Like do i start with grammar, syntax, etc...

(Warning: This is a bit of a long post :P)When it comes to coming up with languages I don’treally use many websites to be honest. Most of it comes from messing around inmy notebooks.An important, and weird, thing to remember about conlanging is the amount offreedom you have. When it comes to the grammar and syntax and grammar you canchoose whatever you want. You’re unbound by naturalism because you can createthe rationale for these features after the fact. If you want VSO word-orderyou make your language have VSO word-order. If you want verbs to conjugate forday of the week, you can make verbs conjugate for day of the week. You can dowhatever you want, and that can be scary for newcomers. But, for helping’ssake, I’ll go through my conlanging process.

First, grammar-wise, I choose the word-order, using ‘I♥NY’. I like usingthis because it covers both ‘Subject-Verb-Object’ word-order and ‘Adjective-Noun’word-order, although this doesn’t even have to be regular. You can make uprules, like ‘Adjectives go after the noun if it’s a colour!’ or ‘If there aremore than two verbs the first verb moves to before the subject!’.Usually, I prefer ‘♥YNI’ word-order because Ifeel it puts the most important information first but I know it’s not verycommon cross-linguistically so for my naturalistic-ish conlangs I chose morecommon word-order like ‘I♥YN’ and ‘INY♥’. But you literally can do whatever you want here. For instance,I devised a system that made word-order almost completely free for Air-esebecause Air is the element of freedom.

After that you can choose whether you want to modify the nouns/adjectives/verbsin a sentence. Some languages conjugate verbs and add case ending but othersdon’t. Some languages have grammatical genders or noun classes and others don’t.Same with tense, possessive markers, and even pronouns!One tip I’d have is to just look up other languages, especially languagesoutside your native language’s language family. You learn that some things youthought were necessary for language actually aren’t. In many languages in the Sino-spherethey don’t have grammatical tense, in Welsh there’s a distinction between pluraland singular 2nd-person pronouns, and in Japanese they don’t changethe nouns for number. You get ideas for your conlangs, and this also helps ifyou’re stuck with creating the sound of your language. Check out the sounds andsyllable structures of other languages too. Even if you don’t want anaturalistic language you get ideas.

You can be inspired by certain language but with conlanging you are constrainedby nothing. For example, Chinese has a ‘I♥NY’word-order so I gave that to Earth-ese initially but then I added ‘context words’that must be at the start of a sentence, changed it to ‘YN’ word-order with theadjectives, and I also added the definite and indefinite articles that Chineselacks. On a certain level, I though these would suit the ‘rigidity’ of stone, representingthe Earth Kingdom, but I could have done whatever I wanted.

I don’t use it to create full languages but there is thiswebsite https://www.vulgarlang.com/and I do sometimes take ideas from the languages it creates, when it comes to casemarking, aspects, and sound changes and things.

Hope this helped :DI focused on the grammar mostly because phonology/sound is easily my biggestweakness and it’s usually what I cover last. I come up with a basic skeleton ofthe sentence:

[Me] [idiot][be-present.inf]And then I use websites like http://akana.conlang.org/tools/awkwords/and http://www.mauvecloud.net/randomchooser.htmlto come up with words to make:“Jeivaitu bi.”

I think I’ll go over more in-depth how I came up with the phonology ofeach language in a later post since it’s pretty complicated and not very usual of conlangers.

[shirlleycoyle]

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

This story was originally published on mssv.net by Adrian Hon (@adrianhon)

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. Last week, it was 5G cell towers, this week it’s Wayfair; who knows what next week will bring? But QAnon’s followers always seem to begin their journey with the same refrain: “I’ve done my research.”

I’d heard that line before. In early 2001, the marketing for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, A.I., had just begun. YouTube wouldn’t launch for another four years, so you had to be eagle-eyed to spot the unusual credit next to Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor: Jeanine Salla, the movie’s “Sentient Machine Therapist.”

Close-up of the A.I. movie poster

Soon after, Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) posted a tip from a reader:

“Type her name in the Google.com search engine, and see what sites pop up…pretty cool stuff! Keep up the good work, Harry!! –ClaviusBase”

(Yes, in 2001 Google was so new you had to spell out its web address.)

The Google results began with Jeanine Salla’s homepage but led to a whole network of fictional sites. Some were futuristic versions of police websites or lifestyle magazines; others were inscrutable online stores and hacked blogs. A couple were in German and Japanese. In all, over twenty sites and phone numbers were listed.

By the end of the day, the websites racked up 25 million hits, all from a single AICN article suggesting readers ‘do their research’. It later emerged they were part of one of the first-ever alternate reality games (ARG), The Beast, developed by Microsoft to promote Spielberg’s movie.

The way I’ve described it here, The Beast sounds like enormous fun. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a doorway into 2142 filled with websites and phone numbers and puzzles, with runaway robots who need your help and even live events around the world? But consider how much work it required to understand the story and it begins to sound less like “watching TV” fun and more like “painstaking research” fun. Along with tracking dozens of websites that updated in real time, you had to solve lute tablature puzzles, decode base 64 messages, reconstruct 3D models of island chains that spelt out messages, and gather clues from newspaper and TV adverts across the US.

This purposeful yet bewildering complexity is the complete opposite of what many associate with conventional popular entertainment, where every bump in your road to enjoyment has been smoothed away in the pursuit of instant engagement and maximal profit. But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research—they all aim for the same spot.

What was new in The Beast and the ARGs that followed it was less the specific puzzles and stories they incorporated, but the sheer scale of the worlds they realised—so vast and fast-moving that no individual could hope to comprehend them. Instead, players were forced to cooperate, sharing discoveries and solutions, exchanging ideas, and creating resources for others to follow. I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.

QAnon is not an ARG. It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without ARGs. But QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information.

In other words, maybe QAnon is… fun?

ARGs never made it big. They came too early and It’s hard to charge for a game that you stumble into through a Google search. But maybe their purposely-fragmented, internet-native, community-based form of storytelling and puzzle-solving was just biding its time…

This blog post expands on the ideas in my Twitter thread about QAnon and ARGs, and incorporates many of the valuable replies. Please note, however, that I’m not a QAnon expert and I’m not a scholar of conspiracy theories. I’m not even the first to compare QAnon to LARPs and ARGs.

But my experience as lead designer of Perplex City, one of the world’s most popular and longest-running ARGs, gives me a special perspective on QAnon’s game-like nature. My background as a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist also gives me insight into what motivates people.

Today, I run Six to Start, best known for Zombies, Run!, an audio-based augmented reality game with half a million active players, and I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification.

It’s Like We Did It On Purpose

Perplex City “Ascendancy Point” Story Arc

When I was designing Perplex City, I loved sketching out new story arcs. I’d create intricate chains of information and clues for players to uncover, colour-coding for different websites and characters. There was a knack to having enough parallel strands of investigation going on so that players didn’t feel railroaded, but not so many that they were overwhelmed. It was a particular pleasure to have seemingly unconnected arcs intersect after weeks or months.

Merely half of the “Q-web“

No-one would mistake the clean lines of my flowcharts for the snarl of links that makes up a QAnon theory, but the principles are similar: one discovery leading to the next. Of course, these two flowcharts are very different beasts. The QAnon one is an imaginary, retrospective description of supposedly-connected data, while mine is a prescriptive network of events I would design.

Except that’s not quite true. In reality, Perplex City players didn’t always solve our puzzles as quickly as we intended them to, or they became convinced their incorrect solution was correct, or embarrassingly, our puzzles were broken and had no solution at all. In those cases we had to rewrite the story on the fly.

When this happens in most media, you just hold up your hands and say you made a mistake. In video games, you can issue an online update and hope no-one’s the wiser. But in ARGs, a public correction would shatter the uniquely-prolonged collective suspension of disbelief in the story. This was thought to be so integral to the appeal of ARGs, it was termed TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.”

So when we messed up in Perplex City, we tried mightily to avoid editing websites, a sure sign this was, in fact, a game. Instead, we’d fix it by adding new storylines and writing through the problem (it helped to have a crack team of writers and designers, including Naomi Alderman, Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Dan Hon, Jey Biddulph, Fi Silk, Eric Harshbarger, and many many others).

We had a saying when these diversions worked out especially well: “It’s like we did it on purpose.”

Every ARG designer can tell a similar war story. Here’s Josh Fialkov, writer for the Lonelygirl15 ARG/show:

“Our fans/viewers would build elaborate (and pretty neat) theories and stories around the stories we’d already put together and then we’d merge them into our narrative, which would then engage them more. The one I think about the most is we were shooting something on location and we’re run and gunning. We fucked up and our local set PA ended up in the background of a long selfie shot. We had no idea. It was 100% a screw up. The fans became convinced the character was in danger. And then later when that character revealed herself as part of the evil conspiracy — that footage was part of the audiences proof that she was working with the bad guys all along — “THATS why he was in the background!” They literally found a mistake – made it a story point. And used it as evidence of their own foresight into the ending — despite it being, again, us totally being exhausted and sloppy. And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.”

Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur-conspiracy theory such that seems pointless to call out inconsistencies. In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than “Q”?

Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry. That tip from “ClaviusBase” to AICN that catapulted The Beast to massive mainstream coverage? The designers more or less admitted it came from them. Indeed, there’s a grand tradition of ARG “puppetmasters” (an actual term used by devotees) sneaking out from “behind the curtain” (ditto) to create “sockpuppet accounts” in community forums to seed clues, provide solutions, and generally chivvy players along the paths they so carefully designed.

As an ARG designer, I used to take a hard line against this kind of cheating but in the years since, I’ve mellowed somewhat, mostly because it can make the game more fun, and ultimately, because everyone expects it these days. That’s not the case with QAnon.

Yes, anyone who uses 4chan and 8chan understands that anonymity is baked into the system such that posters frequently create entire threads where they argue against themselves in the guise of anonymous users who are impossible to distinguish or trace back to a single individual – but do the more casual QAnon followers know that?

Local Fame

A Beautiful Mind

Pop culture’s conspiracy theorist sits in a dark basement stringing together photos and newspaper clippings on their "crazy wall." On the few occasions this leads to useful results, it’s an unenviable pursuit. Anyone choosing such an existence tends to be shunned by society.

But this ignores one gaping fact: piecing together theories is really satisfying. Writing my walkthrough for The Beast was rewarding and meaningful, appreciated by an enthusiastic community in a way that my molecular biology essays most certainly were not. Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to “real” friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale. This won’t be news to most of you, but I think it’s still news to decision-makers in traditional media and politics.

Good ARGs are deliberately designed with puzzles and challenges that require unusual talents—I designed one puzzle that required a good understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—with problems so large that they require crowdsourcing to solve, such that all players feel like welcome and valued contributors.

Needless to say, that feeling is missing from many people’s lives:

“ARGs are generally a showcase for special talent that often goes unrecognized elsewhere. I have met so many wildly talented people with weird knowledge through them.”

If you’re first to solve a puzzle or make a connection, you can attain local fame in ARG communities, as Dan Hon, COO at Mind Candy (makers of the Perplex City ARG), notes. The vast online communities for TV shows like Lost and Westworld, with their purposefully convoluted mystery box plots, also reward those who guess twists early, or produce helpful explainer videos. Yes, the reward is “just” internet points in the form of Reddit upvotes, but the feeling of being appreciated is very real. It’s no coincidence that Lost and Westworld both used ARGs to promote their shows.

Wherever you have depth in storytelling or content or mechanics, you’ll find the same kind of online communities. Games like Bloodborne, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Animal Crossing, Eve Online, and Elite Dangerous, they all share the same race for discovery. These discoveries eventually become processed into explainer videos and Reddit posts that are more accessible for wider audiences.

The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch). Michael Andersen, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network news site, is a fan of this trend, but wonders about its downside—with reference to conspiracy theorists:

“[W]hen you’re reading (or watching) a summary of an ARG? All of the assumptions and logical leaps have been wrapped up and packaged for you, tied up with a nice little bow. Everything makes sense, and you can see how it all flows together. Living it, though? Sheer chaos. Wild conjectures and theories flying left and right, with circumstantial evidence and speculation ruling the day. Things exist in a fugue state of being simultaneously true-and-not-true, and it’s only the accumulation of evidence that resolves it. And acquiring a “knack” for sifting through theories to surface what’s believable is an extremely valuable skill—both for actively playing ARGs, and for life in general.And sometimes, I worry that when people consume these neatly packaged theories that show all the pieces coming together, they miss out on all those false starts and coincidences that help develop critical thinking skills. …because yes, conspiracy theories try and offer up those same neat packages that attempt to explain the seemingly unexplained. And it’s pretty damn important to learn how groups can be led astray in search of those neatly wrapped packages.”

“SPEC”

I’m a big fan of the SCP Foundation, a creative writing website set within a shared universe not unlike The X-Files. Its top-rated stories rank among the best science fiction and horror I’ve read. A few years ago, I wrote my own (very silly) story, SCP-3993, where New York’s ubiquitous LinkNYC internet kiosks are cover for a mysterious reality-altering invasion.

CITYBRIDGE/NYC

Like the rest of SCP, this was all in good fun, but I recently discovered LinkNYC is tangled up in QAnon conspiracy theories. To be fair, you can say the same thing about pretty much every modern technology, but it’s not surprising their monolith-like presence caught conspiracy theorists’ attention as it did mine.

It’s not unreasonable to be creeped out by LinkNYC. In 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to the mayor about “the vast amount of private information retained by the LinkNYC system and the lack of robust language in the privacy policy protecting users against unwarranted government surveillance.” Two years later, kiosks along Third Avenue in Midtown mysteriously blasted out a slowed-down version of the Mister Softee theme song. So there’s at least some cause for speculation. The problem is when speculation hardens into reality.

Not long after the AICN post, The Beast’s players set up a Yahoo Group mailing list called Cloudmakers, named after a boat in the story. As the number of posts rose to dozens and then hundreds per day, it became obvious to list moderators (including me) that some form of organisation was in order. One rule we established was that posts should include a prefix in their subject so members could easily distinguish website updates from puzzle solutions.

My favourite prefix was “SPEC,” a catch-all for any kind of unfounded speculation, most of which was fun nonsense but some of which ended up being true. There were no limits on what or how much you could post, but you always had to use the prefix so people could ignore it. Other moderated communities have similar guidelines, with rationalists using their typically long-winded “epistemic status” metadata.

Absent this kind of moderation, speculation ends up overwhelming communities since it’s far easier and more fun to bullshit than do actual research. And if speculation is repeated enough times, if it’s finessed enough, it can harden into accepted fact, leading to devastating and even fatal consequences.

I’ve personally been the subject of this process thanks to my work in ARGs—not just once, but twice.

The first occasion was fairly innocent. One of our more famous Perplex City puzzles, Billion to One, was a photo of a man. That’s it. The challenge was to find him. Obviously, we were riffing on the whole “six degrees of separation” concept. Some thought it’d be easy, but I was less convinced. Sure enough, fourteen years on, the puzzle is still unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Every so often, the internet rediscovers the puzzle amid a flurry of YouTube videos and podcasts; I can tell whenever this happens because people start DMing me on Twitter and Instagram.

This literally came a few days ago

A clue in the puzzle is the man’s name, Satoshi. It is not a rare name, and it happens to be same as the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. So of course people think Perplex City’s Satoshi created bitcoin. Not a lot of people, to be fair, but enough that I get DMs about it every week. But it’s all pretty innocent, like I said.

More concerning is my presumed connection to Cicada 3301, a mysterious group that recruited codebreakers through very difficult online puzzles. Back in 2011, my company developed a pseudo-ARG for the BBC Two factual series, The Code, all about mathematics. This involved planting clues into the show itself, along with online educational games and a treasure hunt.

To illustrate the concept of prime numbers, The Code explored the gestation period of cicadas. We had no hand in the writing of the show; we got the script and developed our ARG around it. But this was enough to create a brand new conspiracy theory, featuring yours truly:

My bit starts around 20 minutes in:

Interviewer: Why [did you make a puzzle about] cicadas?

Me: Cicadas are known for having a gestation period which is linked to prime numbers. Prime numbers are at the heart of nature and the heart of mathematics.

Interviewer: That puzzle comes out in June 2011.

Me: Yeah.

Interviewer: Six months later, Cicada 3301 makes its international debut.

Me: It's a big coincidence.

Interviewer: There are some people who have brought up the fact that whoever's behind Cicada 3301 would have to be a very accomplished game maker.

Me: Sure.

Interviewer: You would be a candidate to be that person.

Me: That's true, I mean, Cicada 3301 has a lot in common with the games we've made. I think that one big difference (chuckles) is that normally when we make alternate reality games, we do it for money. And it's not so clear to understand where the funding for Cicada 3301 is coming from.

Clearly this was all just in fun – I knew it and the interviewer knew it. That’s why I agreed to take part. But does everyone watching this understand that? There’s no “SPEC” tag on the video. At least a few commenters are taking it seriously:

I am the “ARG guy” in question

I’m not worried, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a touch concerned that Cicada 3301 now lies squarely in the QAnon vortex and in the “Q-web“:

Here’s a good interview with the creator of the “Q-web”

My defence that the cicada puzzle in The Code was “a big coincidence” (albeit delivered with an unfortunate shit-eating grin) didn’t hold water. In the conspiracy theorest mindset, no such thing exists:

“According to Michael Barkun, emeritus professor of political science at Syracuse University, three core principles characterize most conspiracy theories. Firstly, the belief that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Secondly, that nothing is as it seems: The “appearance of innocence” is to be suspected. Finally, the belief that everything is connected through a hidden pattern.”

These are helpful beliefs when playing an ARG or watching a TV show designed with twists and turns. It’s fun to speculate and to join seemingly disparate ideas, especially when the creators encourage and reward this behaviour. It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or burning down 5G cell towers.

Because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of “SPEC” tags. In their absence, YouTube has added annotated QAnon videos with links to its Wikipedia article, and Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, among other actions. Supposedly, Facebook is planning to do the same.

These are useful steps but will not stop QAnon from spreading in social media comments or private chat groups or unmoderated forums. It’s not something we can reasonably hope for, and I don’t think there’s any technological solution (e.g. browser extensions) either. The only way to stop people from mistaking speculation from fact is for them to want to stop.

Cryptic

It’s always nice to have a few mysteries for players to speculate on in an ARG, if only because it helps them pass the time while the poor puppetmasters scramble to sate their insatiable demand for more website updates and puzzles. A good mystery can keep a community guessing for, as Lost did with its numbers or Game of Thrones with Jon Snow’s parentage. But these mysteries always have to be balanced against specifics, lest the whole story dissolve into a puddle of mush; for as much we derided Lost for the underwhelming conclusion to its mysteries, no-one would’ve watched in the first place if the episode-to-episode storytelling wasn’t so strong.

The downside of being too mysterious in Perplex City is that cryptic messages often led players on wild goose chases such that they completely ignored entire story arcs in favour of pursuing their own theories. This was bad for us because we had a pretty strict timetable that we needed our story to play out on, pinned against the release of our physical puzzle cards that funded the entire enterprise. If players took too long to find the $200,000 treasure at the conclusion of the story, we might run out of money.

QAnon can favour cryptic messages because, as far as I know, they don’t have a specific timeline or goal in mind, let alone a production budget or paid staff. Not only is there no harm in followers misinterpreting messages, but it’s a strength: followers can occupy themselves with their own spin-off theories far better than “Q” can. Dan Hon notes:

“For every ARG I’ve been involved in and ones my friends have been involved in, communities always consume/complete/burn through content faster than you can make it, when you’re doing a narrative-based game. This content generation/consumption/playing asymmetry is, I think, just a fact. But QAnon “solved” it by being able to co-opt all content that already exists and … encourages and allows you to create new content that counts and is fair play in-the-game.”

But even QAnon needs some specificity, hence their frequent references to actual people, places, events, and so on.

A brief aside on designing very hard puzzles

It was useful to be cryptic when I needed to control the speed at which players solved especially consequential puzzles, like the one revealing where our $200,000 treasure was buried. For story and marketing purposes, we wanted players to be able to find it as soon as they had access to all 256 puzzle cards, which we released in three waves. We also wanted players to feel like they were making progress before they had all the cards and we didn’t want them to find the location the minute they had the last card.

My answer was to represent the location as the solution to multiple cryptic puzzles. One puzzle referred to the Jurassic strata in the UK, which I split across the background of 14 cards. Another began with a microdot revealing which order to arrange triple letters I’d hidden on a bunch of cards. By performing mod arithmetic on the letter/number values, you would arrive at 1, 2, 3 or 4, corresponding to the four DNA nucleotides. If you understood the triplets as codons for amino acids, they became letters. These letters led you to the phrase “Duke of Burgundy”, the name of a butterfly whose location, when combined with the Jurassic strata, would help you narrow down the location of the treasure.

The nice thing about this convoluted sequence is that we could provide additional online clues to help the players community when they got stuck. The point being, you can’t make an easy puzzle harder, but you can make a hard puzzle easier.

Beyond ARGs

It can feel crass to compare ARGs to a conspiracy theory that’s caused so much harm. But this reveals the crucial difference between them: in QAnon, the stakes so high, any action is justified. If you truly believe an online store or a pizza parlour is engaging in child trafficking and the authorities are complicit, extreme behaviour is justified.

Gabriel Roth, editorial director for audio at Slate, extends this idea:

“What QAnon has that ARGs didn’t have is the claim of factual truth; in that sense it reminds me of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoir wave of the 90s and early 00s. If you have a story based on real life, but you want to make it more interesting, the correct thing to do is change the names of the people and make it as interesting as you like and call it fiction. The insight of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoirists (I’m thinking of James Frey and Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris) was that you could call it nonfiction and readers would like it much better because it would have the claim of actual factual truth, wowee!! And it worked! How much more engaging and addictive is an immersive, participatory ARG when it adds that unique frisson you can only get with the claim of factual truth? And bear in mind that ARG-scale stories aren’t about mere personal experiences—they operate on a world-historical scale.”

ARGs’ playfulness with the truth and their sometimes-imperceptible winking of This Is Not A Game (accusations Lonelygirl15 was a hoax) is only the most modern incarnation of epistolary storytelling. In that context, immersive and realistic stories have long elicited extreme reactions, like the panic incited by Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (often exaggerated, to be fair).

We don’t have to wonder what happens when an ARG community meets a matter of life and death. Not long after The Beast concluded, the 9/11 attacks happened. A small number of posters in the Cloudmakers mailing list suggested the community use its skills to “solve” the question of who was behind the attack.

The brief but intense discussion that ensued has become a cautionary tale of ARG communities getting carried away and being unable to distinguish fiction from reality. In reality, the community and the moderators quickly shut down the idea as being impractical, insensitive, and very dangerous. “Cloudmakers tried to solve 9/11” is a great story, but it’s completely false.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for the poster child for online sleuthing gone wrong, the r/findbostonbombers subreddit. There’s a parallel between the essentially unmoderated, anonymous theorists of r/findbostonbombers and those in QAnon: neither feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable, as Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes:

“There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere”

There’s truth in that feeling. There is a vast amount of information online, and sometimes it is possible to solve “mysteries”, which makes it hard to criticise people for trying, especially when it comes to stopping perceived injustices. But it’s the sheer volume of information online that makes it so easy and so tempting and so fun to draw spurious connections.

That joy of solving and connecting and sharing and communication can do great things, and it can do awful things. As Josh Fialkov, writer for Lonelygirl15, says:

That brain power negatively focused on what [conspiracy theorists] perceive as life and death (but is actually crassly manipulated paranoia) scares the living shit out of me.

What ARGs Can Teach Us

Can we make “good ARGs”? Could ARGs inoculate people against conspiracy theories like QAnon?

The short answer is: No. When it comes to games that are educational and fun, you usually have to pick one, not both—and I say that as someone who thinks he’s done a decent job at making “serious games” over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s really hard, and I doubt any such ARG would get played by the right audience anyway.

The long answer: I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification. Come back in a year or two.

For now, here’s a medium-sized answer. No ARG can heal the deep mistrust and fear and economic and spiritual malaise that underlies QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories, any more than a book or a movie can solve racism. There are hints at ARG-like things that could work, though—not in directly combatting QAnon’s appeal, but in channeling people’s energy and zeal of community-based problem-solving toward better causes.

Take The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to compile the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the U.S. Every day, volunteers collect the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every state and territory. In the absence of reliable governmental figures, it’s become one of the best sources not just in the U.S., but in the world.

It’s also incredibly transparent. You can drill down into the raw data volunteers have collected on Google Sheets, view every line of code written on Github, and ask them questions on Slack. Errors and ambiguities in the data are quickly disclosed and explained rather than hidden or ignored. There’s something game-like in the daily quest to collect the best-quality data and to continually expand and improve the metrics being tracked. And like in the best ARGs, volunteers of all backgrounds and skills are welcomed. It’s one of the most impressive and well-organising reporting projects I’ve ever seen; “crowdsourcing” doesn’t even come close to describing its scale.

If you applied ARG skills to investigative journalism, you’d get something like Bellingcat, an an open-source intelligence group that discovered how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat’s volunteers painstakingly pieced together publicly-available information to determine MH17 was downed by a Buk missile launcher originating from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later came to the same conclusion.

Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of trust. Today, people don’t trust authorities because authorities have repeatedly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust – misreporting or manipulating COVID-19 testing figures, delaying the publication of government investigations, burning records of past atrocities, and deploying unmarked federal forces. Perhaps authorities were just as untrustworthy twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, but today we rightly expect more.

Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, believes it’s that lack of trust that leads people to QAnon:

“Q’s [followers] … are starving for information. Their willingness to chase bread crumbs is a symptom of ignorance and powerlessness. There may be something to their belief that the machinery of the state is inaccessible to the people. It’s hard to blame them for resorting to fantasy and esotericism, after all, when accurate information about the government’s current activities is so easily concealed and so woefully incomplete.”

So the goal cannot be to simply restore trust in existing authorities. Rather, I think it’s to restore faith in truth and knowledge itself. The COVID Tracking Project and Bellingcat help reveal truth by crowdsourcing information. They show their work via hypertext and open data, creating a structure upon which higher-level analysis and journalism can be built. And if they can’t find the truth, they’re willing to say so.

QAnon seems just as open. Everything is online. Every discussion, every idea, every theory is all joined together in a warped edifice where speculation becomes fact and fact leads to action. It’s thrilling to discover, and as you find new terms to Google and new threads to pull upon, you can feel just like a real researcher. And you can never get bored. There’s always new information to make sense of, always a new puzzle to solve, always a new enemy to take down.

QAnon fills the void of information that states have created—not with facts, but with fantasy. If we don’t want QAnon to fill that void, someone else has to. Government institutions can’t be relied upon to do this sustainably, given how underfunded and politicised they’ve become in recent years. Traditional journalism has also struggled against its own challenges of opacity and lack of resources. So maybe that someone is… us.

ARGs teach us that the search for knowledge and truth can be immensely rewarding, not in spite of their deliberately-fractured stories and near-impossible puzzles, but because of them. They teach us that communities can self-organise and self-moderate to take on immense challenges in a responsible way. And they teach us that people are ready and willing to volunteer to work if they’re welcomed, no matter their talent.

It’s hard to create these communities. They rely on software and tools that aren’t always free or easy to use. They need volunteers who have spare time to give and moderators who can be supported, financially and emotionally, through the struggles that always come. These communities already exist. They just need more help.

Despite the growing shadow of QAnon, I’m hopeful for the future. The beauty of ARGs and ARG-like communities isn’t their power to discover truth. It’s how they make the process of discovery so deeply rewarding.

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[wrestlingisfake]

Backlash preview

Randy Orton vs. Jinder Mahal - This is for Orton’s WWE world championship.

The story of the match is all about Mahal, who spent most of 2011-2014 in the prelims before being released by WWE, only to return last year when WWE suddenly brought back the brand split and needed more prelim guys.  Jinder seemed to be going nowhere, even as he was improbably used in a celebrity angle at this year’s Wrestlemania (getting beat up by some football guy) and was moved from Raw to Smackdown.  Then, out of nowhere, he won a six-way match to earn this title shot with the help of the Bollywood Boys (turned heel and rebranded as the Singh brothers).  A couple of days later, WWE started talking up plans to expand its business in India, and you could start to see why they’d want a main event faction of three Indian-Canadian guys.

This is easily the biggest match of Mahal’s career.  It’d be enough pressure to headline a pay-per-view for the first time, or even to live up to the company’s faith that you can carry the brand in an lucrative new market.  More than anything, though, Jinder has to overcome the resentment from fans who don’t buy his sudden push from the bottom to the top, or dismiss him as a guy getting a huge opportunity because of his ethnicity.  It’s a lot to deal with, and we don’t know if he can handle it because WWE frankly failed to groom him for this.

If it was up to me, Jinder would be getting this push as a babyface, and it would have started gradually about eight months ago.  Instead he’s a heel having the brass ring handed way, way down to him, which makes this more feel more like when JBL suddenly rose from prelim guy to world champion in 2004.  I didn’t think that got JBL the right kind of heat, and I don’t think it’ll work for Jinder either (especially in Chicago).  Nevertheless, I’m pulling for the guy, if only because it’d be something new and Randy Orton is boring as hell.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Dolph Ziggler - This will be Nakamura’s first televised match since losing at Takeover: Orlando and leaving NXT to join the Smackdown roster.

Two years ago I watched Wrestle Kingdom 9 and saw Nakamura for the first time, and thought “Man, this guy is the most WWE kinda guy in Japan, it’s a shame he’ll never get to be at a WWE show.”  A year ago I was at Payback in Chicago thinking “Wow, by the time Chicago hosts another pay-per-view, they’ll have called up Nakamura to the main roster, and I’ll get to see him live!”  Now it’s all finally gonna happen and I’m gonna be right there in the building.  This will be pretty special for me.

I’ve heard the goal with this match is to recreate the atmosphere of the big Nakamura vs. Sami Zayn match last year.  Good.  Even a tenth of that should be fantastic.  Ziggler’s role in this will be to put Shinsuke over and make it look good, which he’s made a career of doing so I’m not worried about that end of it.  Pretty sure this can’t go wrong.  In case you can’t tell, I’m predicting Nakamura wins.

Kevin Owens vs. AJ Styles - Owens was moved from Raw to Smackdown in April’s “superstar shakeup,” bringing the United States championship with him.  AJ earned the right to challenge for the title, but had to wait until Owens traded it with Jericho a couple of times to settle that feud.

It’s funny to think that just a few years ago these two were Mr. ROH and Mr. TNA, respectively, and I had no expectation at all that either would find their way to WWE.  It should be a treat seeing them live, albeit fighting over the least important title either of them has ever held.

WWE is clearly setting up “has the US title” as Owens’s entire gimmick, so I sorta don’t think AJ can win here.

Naomi & Charlotte Flair & Becky Lynch vs. Natalya & Tamina & Carmella - Charlotte was shifted to Raw last month, so the heels beat her up and started calling themselves “the welcoming committee.”   The face team reminds me of Triple H in 2008, in that the other faces can mostly count on Charlotte but everybody knows all she’d turn on them in a heartbeat if it meant getting a title match.

It kinda doesn’t matter what happens in this match, so let me suggest that Natalya should pin Naomi and Tamina should piss of Charlotte to set up feuds for the next show.

Baron Corbin vs. Sami Zayn - Sami is an underrated little guy the fans love and Corbin is an overrated tall guy WWE loves.  Now, you’d think Sami has to do the job, to get as close as they can to “why would you book everybody’s favorite underdog to lose in his hometown on his birthday after he dedicated the match to his dying mother?” heat.  But every time I think they’re going to put Corbin over they WWE it up and book an upset because this company couldn’t push a grocery cart.  So this is one of those “what if you dropped a cat taped to buttered bread” matches.  Fans like to chant “fight forever,” but this time they may get their wish.  I predict the heat death of the universe.

Jimmy Uso & Jey Uso vs. Tyler Breeze & Fandango - The Usos are defending the Smackdown tag team championship.  Breezango basically got the shot because there aren’t very many teams on Smackdown that aren’t the Ascension.  It’s funny thinking about how Breeze and Fandango went from two NXT guys that went nowhere on the main roster, to randomly teaming together, to dressing like sexy cops, to actually kinda getting over.  I think they’ll be pretty popular in Chicago.  I’d do a title change here, but I’m thinking WWE won’t.

Luke Harper vs. Erick Rowan - Imagine if you were going to see Van Halen, but Eddie Van Halen’s not there and neither is David Lee Roth, and it’s just the drummer from Van Halen and the bassist from Van Halen, but they’re mad at each other for some stupid Van Halen drama you don’t care about.  That is what this is, except Van Halen at least made 1984 whereas the Wyatt Family just sucked.  I guess Luke Harper wins, because at least the drummer’s name is Van Halen.

Tye Dillinger vs. Aiden English - You’ve gotta be kidding me.  Tye’s been on the main roster for like six weeks and he’s already in the same go-nowhere spot he was in at NXT.  Why not have him feud with Elias Sampson and Apollo Crews while you’re at it?  I don’t have high hopes for this kid.  I wonder if Breezango needs a third sexy cop who can count to ten?  Well, anyway, Dillinger can’t possibly lose to Enligh, so there’s that.